First Focus

Too Much Evidence to Ignore on Preschool

October 16, 2013

This afternoon, the New America Foundation hosted an event highlighting a new paper titled Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education with primary authors Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Christina Weiland. The research brief provides a comprehensive review of current research on preschool and finds that preschool has very positive results for children.

For those who have been keeping up with the research on preschool, this paper should be unsurprising though still extremely helpful. Because young children experience important brain development before they enter kindergarten, high-quality preschool experiences are important to ensure children experience healthy development. As such, research finds that early learning leads to:

• A positive short term impact on early language, literacy and mathematics skills. This applies to small, intensive demonstration programs like Perry Preschool and larger, more broadly available initiatives like Head Start.
• A modest but positive impact on socioemotional development. The research on this is not as clear cut as above. Evidence reveals that intensive initiatives seem to improve children’s behavior, while larger initiatives have shown positive impacts on attentiveness. Evidence also suggests that when socioemotional growth is a primary goal of the preschool program it leads to more improvement.
• Improvements in children’s health. Research reveals that Head Start improves children’s access to vaccinations, decreases child mortality, and increases the likelihood that children have a regular medical home and regular dental care.
• Positive long-term effects even after convergence of test scores. While the Head Start Impact Study showed that test scores in the early grades began to converge for those who did attend Head Start and those who did not, high-quality preschool (including Head Start) led to long-term positive effects of higher high school graduation rates, more school attainment, higher earnings as adults, better health, less criminal behavior and fewer teen pregnancies.
• A positive return on investment. Evidence reveals that the return on investment is between $3 and $7 for every $1 spent on high-quality preschool for both small and broadly available initiatives.

The paper also finds that, while preschool improves language, literacy and mathematics skills for children at all income levels, the positive effects of preschool are even larger for children from low-income families. Currently, children from low-income families are enrolled in preschool at lower rates than their wealthier peers in large part because of the limited availability of publicly funded preschool and the high cost of private preschool. The children who are being left out are given an unfair disadvantage before they even enter school, meaning their futures are largely being decided by their families’ income. Leaving these children out of preschool is also a significant missed opportunity for the country; instead of reaping the significant benefits of enrolling a large percentage of low-income children in preschool and closing academic achievement gaps we’re leaving out the children who could benefit most from high-quality preschool.

Additionally, research shows that the positive effects of preschool are greater for dual language learners (DLLs) and children of immigrants, and some evidence suggests that Hispanic children also benefit more from preschool. This is an important distinction; a majority of DLLS are also Hispanic or Latino, and Hispanic children are enrolled in preschool at lower rates than any other race yet are the fastest growing child demographic. Children of immigrants, DLLs, and Hispanic children all face a number of barriers to accessing preschool. It is important that all children, especially children who face barriers to academic achievement, such as DLLs and children of immigrants, can access high-quality preschool to close achievement gaps and have the same opportunity to reach their full potential.

The brief also finds that high-quality preschool leads to more positive results, and that preschool in the U.S. is of mediocre quality overall. Dramatically increasing the supply of high-quality preschool, as the president proposed in his budget request, would clearly be beneficial for children and for the entire country. The research is in; it’s time to make sure every child can attend high-quality preschool.